NEW DELHI: A day after raiding the residence of Delhi University (DU) professor G N Saibaba in a purported clamp down on the urban network of Naxalites, the Maharashtra Police linked him to a CPI (Maoist) front outfit and claimed it had evidence of his being in direct touch with ultra leaders, including party chief Ganapathy.

According to sources in intelligence agencies, the Gadchiroli Police has evidence that Saibaba was in direct communication with the absconding central committee (CC) members of CPI (Maoist) through two pseudonyms, ‘Prakash’ and ‘Chetan’. The probe, they added, had revealed that he was also in direct touch with CPI (Maoist) chief Muppalla Laxmana Rao alias Ganapathy and carried out his directives on Maoist strategy for overground/underground activities both at home and abroad.

Saibaba told TOI, “My house was searched for three and half hours. They have taken my laptop, pen drives full of academic work. Police rummaged my house, and we were put in one room. I don’t know what all they have done.” He said, “Gadchiroli Police is trying to implicate me in Hem Mishra case. It is entirely fabricated.”

Gadchiroli Police – acting on a search warrant issued by a Maharashtra court – had on Thursday raided the north campus house of Saibaba, who teaches English at Ram Lal Anand College. His computer hard disk, laptop and some literature have been seized.

The seized electronic items have been sent for forensic examination and agencies hope these will yield significant leads on his association with Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF) – a CPI (Maoist) front outfit proscribed in Andhra Pradesh and also having direct links with the CPI (Maoist).

The action against Saibaba came after two overground members of CPI (Maoist), Hem Mishra and Prashant Rahi – arrested by Gadchiroli Police while on their way to Abujmarh to meet top Naxal leaders – named Saibaba as the source of the `incriminating’ material recovered from them.

Earlier, arrested CPI (Maoist) politbureau member Kobad Gandhy had allegedly named Saibaba during his interrogation, describing him as the all-India coordinator of mass organizations of CPI (Maoist). This was later corroborated by CC member Bacha Prasad during his interrogation in 2010.

The search at Saibaba’s house was conducted before independent witnesses and was videographed.

The investigation of this case is in progress and further arrests of the urban network of the CPI (Maoist) cannot be ruled out, according to Gadchiroli Police.

Intelligence agencies believe RDF is a front organization of the CPI (Maoist) active in different parts of the country.

In the CPI (Maoist) strategy for ‘revolution’ in India, the role of “front organizations” or “mass organisations” is to recruit ‘professional revolutionaries’ for the underground movement, raise terror funds, provide legal help to incarcerated members, mobilize urban population and carry out anti-State propaganda.